Precious Blood (3 page)

“Yo, Jenner.”

He turned back to the detective.

“Nice to have you back.”

Outside, a small crowd had gathered at the perimeter, and he saw the antenna of the Channel 7 Mobile News van poking up into the bare branches halfway down the block.

He slipped under the tape and nodded to the perimeter cop as he made his way through the spectators. The morgue wagon was turning onto Seventh as he flagged a cab on Avenue A.

He was home less than ten minutes later.

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*

*

*

Jenner lived on the top floor of a converted lightbulb factory on Crosby Street, between SoHo proper and Little Italy.

He’d bought the loft several years back with inheritance money from his grandfather. He had enough left over for interest to cover his maintenance costs; now that he wasn’t working so much, his taxes had dropped, and he’d found that life was quite manageable on his sporadic income, so long as he was careful. And it wasn’t like he was going out much or anything.

The loft had been a good investment: the area had become fashionable, and its value had soared. They’d cleaned the facade that summer, and on sunny days the brick glowed a deep golden red.

He paid and climbed out of the cab, shoving his change into his coat pocket. Unlocking the entryway door, he saw Julie’s name still next to his on the buzzer; he kept forgetting to remind Pete to take it off.

Takeout menus and car service flyers were plastered down with shoe prints on the lobby floor. He pushed the elevator button and heard the answering grind of machinery.

He rode up, blearily staring at the eddies in the worn gray linoleum floor. There was a bump as the elevator settled on the sixth floor.

Dove gray light filtered through the hall skylight. Across the hall, Jun Saito’s doorway was open. Jun was standing in the doorway, swaying to Santo and Johnny’s “Sleep Walk,”

holding a bottle of beer. Seeing Jenner, he tipped his gray Kangol cap from his eyes and straightened.

“Jenner? I thought I heard you come in a half hour ago.”

Jenner shook his head. “Too many Red Stripes, my friend.”

Jun’s girlfriend Kimi appeared in the doorway behind him and said something in Japanese to him, then saw Jenner. “Hi, Jenner. Tell Jun it’s time for bed.”

“Jun, go to bed.”

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Giggling, she pulled Jun inside; as Jenner closed his door, he heard her call out, “ ’Night, Jenner.”

Inside his loft, all the curtains were drawn, and the heated air made the large room seem coddled and close. At the other end of the room, a small Noguchi lamp on his bedside table made a warm hollow of golden light. His robe was on the floor by the bed, and his notepad lay open by the phone, Andrea Delore’s address scrawled on the top page.

He tossed his coat over the ladder-back chair by his desk, and undressed in the bathroom. Taking off his watch, he saw it was already 10:15 a.m. Cursing the loss of sleep, he stepped into the shower.

He dried and put on a T-shirt and pajama bottoms, then brushed his teeth. He turned out the bathroom light and walked toward his bed. He was exhausted, but he didn’t know if he could sleep—the room was dark, but he was awake, wired. He should call Douggie, tell him what was going on.
Fuck
. He sat on the bed.

And then stood quickly: in the corner of the room, half hidden by the tall curtains, stood Ana de Jong.

She was holding a grubby pink raincoat closed over her sweatshirt. Jeans, white sneakers. She was tan and blond, slightly snub-nosed, eyes pale blue; she looked like she’d just stepped off a farm in Iowa, except for the bloodstains on her pant leg and tops of her shoes.

She said, “Dr. Jenner. My name is Ana de Jong . . .”

He’d recognized her from the hallway photos. Apparently, he’d been wrong about the second victim.

“How did you get in?”

She started to shake. “Please . . . My uncle . . . He said I should come . . . He had keys to your loft in his studio downstairs.”

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He, Douggie, and Jun all kept keys for one another’s apartments. “He told you to just come into my loft? When was that?”

She began to cry, slow, coarse sobs racking her body, and as she bent, she let the raincoat fall open, and he saw the blood smeared on her sweatshirt.

“You’re hurt—”

“I . . . I cut myself . . . Climbing over a wall.”

She dropped to her knees, her face in her hands; there was blood on her fingers, too.

He said, “I’m going to call 911—I want you to go to a hospital, and I have to tell the police you’re alive.”

She shook her head urgently. “
No! No police!
” She was biting her lip, eyes filling with tears. “Please . . . you can’t call the police.” She laid her arm across her belly. “It’s just cuts—really, just cuts . . . It’s not as bad as it looks.”

The blood on her clothes seemed mostly dry. He stood, waiting for her to stop sobbing.

When she didn’t stop, he said, “I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.”

She straightened, sniffling.

He was silent a second, then asked if she needed a lawyer.

She looked at him, eyes wide, and said, “A lawyer? Why would I need a lawyer?”

“I know about your roommate. And now you’re here, covered in blood, and you won’t let me call the police.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “I think perhaps you should speak with a lawyer—”

“No, no, you’ve got it all wrong! You know about Andie?

Is she . . .” Her voice trailed off as she mouthed the word.

She was lying to him now—how could she have got out of the apartment and not known her friend was dead? She was manipulating him—enough. He stood, picked up the phone, and dialed Garcia.

“
Who are you calling?
”

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“The detective leading the investigation into your friend’s death.”

“Please don’t . . .” She grabbed his arm. “Please, Dr.

Jenner. My uncle said you’re his friend, and that you’d help me.”

Voice mail. Jenner left a message, asking Garcia to call.

“Listen, this is your business, not mine: you can leave if you want. But if you’re going to stay, you’ve got to talk with Lieutenant Garcia.”

She stood in front of him, trembling, twisting the bloody cuff of her sweatshirt sleeve. Looking down, he saw her jeans were covered with doodles, little hearts and random figures in ballpoint pen. When she looked at him, her gaze reminded Jenner of an automatic camera trying to focus when its batteries were too weak.

He shook his head.

“Come into the kitchen and sit down—you look exhausted.”

She asked if she could use his bathroom. He waited for her at the kitchen table. When he heard her in the bathroom, crying hard, he got up, turned the taps on, and noisily banged pans and plates around in the sink.

After a quarter of an hour, the bathroom door slid open, and she came over to the kitchen area. He motioned to a chair, and she sat, holding her stomach a little gingerly.

“It hurts?”

She nodded.

“I should look at it. You want some water?”

She shook her head, then jumped up as the entry phone buzzer rang. Jenner picked up to see Rad’s face on the monitor. “Hey, Jenner, let me up—I’ve got follow-up.”

Jenner buzzed him in.

He turned to her.

“Miss de Jong, Lieutenant Garcia’s a good cop. He’ll be straight with you. If you haven’t done anything wrong, tell him what happened, and I promise he’ll help you.”

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She rubbed her eyes wearily. “You know him?”

“Maybe ten years now.”

“What does he look like?”

“Look like?” Jenner blinked.

She was serious.

“Hispanic, early forties. Average height, a little thick in the middle. Black hair, mustache. Why?”

“And you trust him?”

“With my life.” It was true.

She stood in front of him, hugging her shoulders, and said,

“I don’t have much choice.”

“I also know some good defense attorneys.”

“I don’t need a lawyer. I just need someone I can trust.”

She slipped back into the bathroom. Jenner shrugged, and opened the door to wait for Rad.

Garcia walked in, coat over one arm, paper coffee cup in the other hand.

“So, there’s been a development: apparently there was a 911 call early this morning. The patrol responded to 311B, found nothing, and called it in as a false alarm. The original call came from a phone box over on Avenue B, so they couldn’t do anything else.”

Garcia was nosing around by the counter. “You got decent coffee, Jenner?”

Jenner shook his head. “Actually, I was just about to go back to bed.”

“So why did you call . . .”

He trailed off, staring over Jenner’s shoulder, seeing Ana de Jong in the bathroom doorway.

Jenner made the introductions. Garcia nodded warily. “You okay? You know, we’re looking for you . . .” He sat down.

“I was hiding.”

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“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want to die.”

Rad shook his head and sat heavily in Jenner’s armchair.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Where were you?”

“In a Laundromat over on Avenue B, then in my uncle’s loft downstairs.”

He was watching her closely. “Were you in the apartment when your roommate . . .”

She nodded, her eyes filling with tears.

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“I did. That was me calling from the pay phone near the Laundromat.”

Garcia motioned for Jenner to join him away from the kitchen area. He spoke quietly. “I’m thinking this might be a better place to talk to her than over at the precinct.”

He glanced at her, then turned back to Jenner again.

“Whatever happened, the kid looks like she’s had a rough night.”

She sat down opposite them. She made a little grimace and said, “It’s like a job interview.”

Garcia made a show of opening his notebook, taking out his pen. “Okay, Ana. I want you to tell us exactly what happened.”

She hesitated; the uncertainty made her seem terribly, terribly young.

He pressed her, his voice soft. “Ana, listen: I’m trying to help you. If I was doing this by the book, I’d bring you in right now.” He paused. “Basically, you tell your story here, or you tell it at the precinct. Your call.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Here.”

She sat. She clasped her hands, working her thumbs together, looking down at the floor. But when she tried to start, the tears returned; Garcia got up and sat next to her, draping his big arm over her shoulder as she wept.

She looked up at Jenner, face flushed and wet. “I think I need a drink.”

Garcia looked to Jenner and nodded.

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Jenner poured her a large scotch and set the tumbler in front of her. She took the glass and took a big gulp, then made a face. She sniffled a little and looked down at her hands.

Garcia looked at her in mock suspicion and jostled her shoulder. “Hey! Are you even old enough to be drinking this?”

She wiped her eyes and said with a weak smile, “I’m twenty-one.” She took a sip of whisky, coughed, then said,

“I’m sorry—I’m not used to this stuff.”

Jenner sat at the table. “Can you tell us what happened now, Ana?”

She nodded. And then she began, her speech quiet and halting.

“Andie and I were in Cancun for Thanksgiving. We just got back this afternoon—we hadn’t even finished unpacking.

We got pizza, and then Andie had to work on her law school Web page, so I went into my room and lit up a blunt. It was like, maybe, ten p.m.? I heard the buzzer, and a minute later Andie came running in and told me to put out the joint because there’s a cop outside. I was freaking out, but Andie said just stay in my room because he was just there about something for school.”

Realizing what she’d just admitted, she turned to Garcia; he was scratching away in his notepad, not reacting. Reassured, she went on.

“So I closed the door and opened my window to air the room out. I heard Andie say she was alone, but then they went into the living room, and I couldn’t hear them so well.

“I was pretty high, so I just lay there and waited. After a while I realized that Andie wasn’t talking anymore, just the guy. Then I heard her kind of . . . screech.

“I didn’t know what to do. I picked up the phone, but it was dead, and my cell was in the kitchen. I got up to see what was
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going on, but before I opened the door, I heard him hit her, hard, and I heard her fall, and then I got really scared.”

Her shoulders were shuddering. “And then I didn’t do
anything . . .
”

Jenner said, “If you’d tried to do something, he’d have killed you. There was nothing you could have done—you have to understand that.”

A tear was trickling down her cheek. “You weren’t there.”

“No. But I saw what he did.”

She gave a dismissive half shrug, then sharply pulled the glass toward her and took a good belt of scotch; this time, there was no grimace.

She wiped her mouth, then continued, her jaw set.

“First thing he did was turn on the TV, really loud. Then he started moving all around the apartment, searching. I heard him go into the kitchen, then the telephone suddenly jerked and started sliding toward the door—he was following the cord to my bedroom. I got under my desk just as he came in.

“He yanked the bed away from the wall like it weighed nothing, then went through the closet, and then he came over behind the desk. I thought he’d found me, but he just opened up the wardrobe. His feet were right next to my head; he was wearing army boots and they had pink mud on them, and I could smell blood. But he didn’t look under the desk.”

She took another gulp of whisky.

“Then he went to the bathroom, and then Andie’s room.

When I heard him start to go in her room, I went into the kitchen, but I couldn’t find my cell. I could hear her moaning. I heard him coming back, and I hid under the counter until he went back to the living room.